Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #11: Fancy Sandals!
June 15th, 2009 | View Comments
Sorry for missing last week’s Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook posting; I was traveling on business. In keeping with the spirit of this series, this week’s phrase is not something I had any occasion to use while I was on the road.
“What a pair of fancy sandals.”
好別緻的涼鞋喔!
Hao3 bie2 zhi4 de5 liang2 xie2 wo5!
すてきなサンダルですね！
Suteki na sandaru desu ne!
It’s a rare week when the Japanese sentence structure is easier to explain to an English speaker than the Chinese sentence structure. The Japanese sentence structure is basically Yoda-esque.
すてき = “cute, gorgeous, swell” (Note: my book gives the hiragana, but there is Kanji. 素敵 = すてき), な = adjective marker, サンダル = “sandals”, です = “are”, ね = emphasis/exclamation word. Almost literally, “Cute sandals, they are!”
The Chinese sentence structure is a bit Yoda-esque as well, but it lacks a verb. There’s also a bit of trickiness around the character 好. Most commonly, 好 means “good” or “well”. For example, 你好嗎? means “Are you well?” (More colloquially, “How are you?”) But in this instance, it functions more like the English word “so”. For example, 好多人喔! means “so many people!”
別緻 means “delightful”, so naturally 好別緻 = “so delightful”. 的 = possessive marker, 涼鞋 = sandals, 喔 = word of exclamation. So the Chinese comes out to be, “So delightful, a property which is possessed by sandals, oh!”
Yvonne posted this on June 15th, 2009 @ 12:00pm in Chinese, Grandma's Crazy Phrasebook, Japanese | Permalink to "Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #11: Fancy Sandals!"
No Comments
There are no comments yet. Be the first to leave one!
American-born Taiwanese girl who married a Japanese guy. And who forgot about six years' of Spanish grammar and most of the vocab.
E-mail Yvonne
nerissa
celiviel
yvonnekao
Korean-American girl who blogs under a Spanish pseudonym because being culturally confusing is fun. Native speakers say that she has outstanding Spanish (which is a definite compliment) and outstanding German (which is most assuredly not).
Elenita
American-born, Taiwanese guy who took five semesters worth of German and ended up with a major in Linguistics.
Subscribe